


Breaking Speed Rules

by ruletheworld



Category: One Piece
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruletheworld/pseuds/ruletheworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Strawhats and a different way of how they could have come to grow up to be the people they are. AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Zoro

Zoro was seventeen, when the man that was just like a father to him, noticed. The teen had until then, never even spent a minute trying to figure himself out. He didn’t spend any time thinking about it afterwards either. It just _was_. The same way blood was red or swords were sharp.

What he did think about, for a great many hours, was why everyone reacted that way and why did they think _like that_. But all that thinking got him nowhere so he eventually stopped that, too.

What he didn’t stop was training – cause you just can’t become the greatest in the world if you don’t train, nevermind that he isn’t ever allowed to fight again, never ever allowed to fight again. He didn’t stop not caring about where he was walking from – always from and not to, not anymore, because you can’t get away from something too fast, whereas you can get to somewhere too fast and they could notice, would notice, but they weren’t allowed to until he was the greatest, they would have to admit it then, that they were behaving stupid and that it didn’t matter, it really didn’t matter at all and why can’t they just _shut up_?! But they did notice – eventually and something inside him says with a voice he hasn’t heard in years and a venom that just shouldn’t be there that of course they did, what did you thought - and the boy has half a mind to break the habit, but never does, he’d have nowhere to go to anyway, so it wasn’t ever worth the trouble.

And now he sits here, with only his swords as company and the stars as witnesses and briefly wonders if maybe, it isn’t _them_ who’re not fit to do anything, but rather that everyone else goes out of their way to ensure they won’t ever make it and while the thought is rather amusing and disturbing, both, he dismisses it, because even if there was any truth to it, he couldn’t possibly care less.

He’s twenty-one now, an alcoholic without a future, his one dream not any further out of his reach than before, but himself not closer to accomplishing it either. And while he ponders about how to get things done, he takes another generous gulp of the cheap, foul-tasting beer, that he’s grown to depend on and hate respectively.

The ache’s still there and while he knows that it’s only gonna get even stronger and he really won’t be able to deal with it while being pissed drunk, he looks down anyway to try and figure out if he’s got enough beer to get him past that light-headed state of drunkenness that is generally called being tipsy.

He doesn’t. There are two more cans, not counting the one in his hands but he’s no lightweight and that’s nothing. He downs the one that is already open, anyway. No point in wasting perfectly bad alcohol. The next things he does is get up, throw the empty can away and groan. He really doesn’t want to deal with this, but it’s not like he’s got a choice. He gathers his swords and is off the next second.


	2. Franky

Cutty Flam was just a kid; a boy at the tender age of eleven and a half, when he found out what it is he thought would be what he does for the rest of his live. His teacher – a convict, he mused years later; should have figured that with someone like that as a role model I was never gonna make it – let him work on what he wanted, giving him all kinds of freedom.

And he’s good at what he did, or so the other guys said.

If only he would stop conversing with those wannabes, the other guys said.

He would glare, scoff or ignore them, for they were all fools and how the hell do you want to make something great, if you never even talk to the people who will end up using it and so he kept on conversing with the ‘wannabes’, more often than not appreciating their input.

But the others kept on telling him that what he’s doing is dump and how they are all useless trash and the kid wanted to just bang their heads against something until there were no more heads, because how, _how_ can people be so close minded and he didn’t understand, didn’t ever understand. He didn’t do it – banging their heads in, that is – and there are times he looked back and regretted that he didn’t, but he was trying to make up for it with spending even more time with his friends, acquaintances and strangers most of his profession avoided.

Eventually his teacher – a convict, but not a criminal, not a bad guy – was taken away. Cutty Flam was only twenty six at that time, the day he died.

Franky’s a gang leader, has been all his live. He hates what he does, - hates doing anything but that what he will never do; _again_ , some voice in the back of his mind adds, which he ignores, always ignores, cause you can’t miss doing something you never did to begin with and Franky never did anything other than what he does now – there’s something missing, what men with a better way with words might call ‘sense of accomplishment’. The boy – sorry, man, for he’s somewhere in his thirties- rarely allows himself to think about the Emptiness, even though it’s just as much a part of him as everything else. He’s got friends and so he’s never bored. That’s already a lot more than he deserves.

They are having a party right now and Franky can’t for the life of him recall on what occasion. His family is all around him yet he can’t help but cry in moments like these. Unsure of what he would say should someone inquire about his tears, he is incredibly relieved when even some five minutes later no one does. His eyes are probably still red at the time he, with a pathetically weak voice, says to no one in particular that he’s not crying.

And no one questions him.

And he feels so **Empty.**


	3. Nami

Nami is a good pickpocket. Until one day, when she was eighteen – her birthday to be precise and interestingly just some moments before her first jump – it never occurred to her that she was probably the _only_ pickpocket.

The whole thing had started innocently enough. She read about it in a book, from way back when people still used money. They would keep this ‘paper money’ on their person and pickpockets took it from them, without them noticing, if successful. At first the girl didn’t knew what to think. The whole concept was foreign and obscure, not to mention that there was just no point to it anymore, but the redhead was young and also so very _bored_ , so she tried it out for herself.

In the beginning people noticed of course, how could they not, she was just starting out and no one is born a master, but she was a kid, a little girl, so when she smiled and told them it was all part of a game no one questioned it. As she got better she started to come up with all kind of ways to use her new skill for her own amusement. Get your hands on the teacher’s papers and you can surprise them by knowing all about the subject of the next lesson. Take a look at the mobile of the current date of your mother and you can embarrass him with unkind details and make sure she sends him packing. Borrow security cards from guards and you can sneak into all the cool places you aren’t actually allowed to go.

It was what she did when she was bored, when she was angry, when she was unsatisfied with something. Soon it was all she did, all she got up for in the mornings, all she thought about. It was like the high you get from those drugs her sister sometimes offered her, when they meet by chance, Nami always a mix of shame, embarrassment, disgust and sheer anger at the thought, mention or sight of her wayward family member. It was at one of those instances, that she – sixteen-years old and thinking she’s got it all planned out - came to the conclusion that yeah, she was just as much of an addict as her big sister. Just that she wasn’t doing drugs, no, for her it was stealing and lying and breaking rules that got her off and really, who out of the two of them was worse?

It was not difficult from there to think she finally figured herself out.She hid it, not by stopping doing what she loved to do – there was no stopping, really, not at that point, maybe not ever - but by being even more careful. So when she’s eighteen and it occurs to her she’s the only pickpocket and then she _jumps_ – yeah. Talk about rude.


End file.
